


Touch Me Back

by w_ren



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-03
Updated: 2012-10-03
Packaged: 2017-11-15 13:29:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/527827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/w_ren/pseuds/w_ren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five moments in the early relationship of Zack and Seeley.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Touch Me Back

1.  
  
Bones has basically kicked him out of her hospital room. Sure, it was under the guise of fetching something-or-other from her office, but Seeley knows a dismissal when he sees one. He doesn't mind, either – honestly, right now, he's just happy that she's _alive_ , and shocked, too, having passed the 12-hour mark.  
  
He doesn't know how to feel. Bones and Hodgins were both alive and well – or at least, as much as expected – but the case was unresolved. Those young men had died and he hadn't been able to offer even closure to their father.  
  
He fishes the swipe card to Bones' office from his bag and fumbles a bit in the dark. He's been sent here to retrieve her current book for what she calls “light reading”, even though when he'd last seen her, she'd looked too exhausted to move, let alone read. He finds it on the coffee table – it takes him a few minutes; her office has to be three times the size of his. And the couch is better than his.  
  
“You should be more quiet, Agent Booth. Angela and Hodgins are downstairs. I think they're having a 'moment'”.  
  
He spins on heel. Zack's standing in the doorway, face as pale in the dark as one of his skeletons. The look he gives Seeley suggests that the idea of experiencing a 'moment' is too baffling for words. Seeley's honestly surprised he could even identify the concept. “Zack, it's got to be 11 at night. What the hell are you doing in here?” For a split-second, Seeley wonders if he lives here, a permanent fixture, sleeping in the rafters and feeding off of the used cadavers.  
  
“Usually Hodgins drives me home. Except he went to the hospital. And even though he came back, I assume that he would not want me to interfere with his moment with Angela.” He pauses. “I've been here for several hours now. Can you give me a lift?”  
  
  
\---  
  
  
Seeley does not actually know where Zack lives. Well, he knows he lives above Hodgins' two-dozen car garage, before the tennis courts and the lake but after the security gate and the two-kilometre driveway, but all of this information is irrelevant without the street address, particularly when Zack falls asleep barely five minutes into the drive.  
  
He pulls over and leans across the seats, touching Zack's shoulder. “Mini-Bones,” he prompts. He's been noticeably nicer to Zack lately. It seemed wrong to be too mean after his brilliant deduction of the burial site. “Wake up, 'fore I kick your scrawny ass out onto the sidewalk.” Then again, nicer didn't necessarily mean nice.  
  
Zack makes a face. He looks different, asleep; his forehead lacks the creases which interaction with real humans seemed to create. His shoulders droop into a more natural position, as opposed to the odd curve he usually held them in. He looked less like a robot and more like the 20-something year old that he is. Seeley shakes his shoulder again. “Zack, wake up,” Seeley snaps after a moment more, and Zack's eyes flicker before his hand comes up and grasps sleepily at Seeley's tie.  
  
Seeley immediately pulls backwards into his own seat. Zack doesn't let go of his tie and his knuckles graze against Seeley's chest. He sits up and blinks. Seeley's hand drops from his shoulder and into the space between them.  
  
“Agent Booth, why have we stopped?” he murmurs. Seeley can see him shaking off sleep, disturbing wisps of hair. “And why am I holding your neck tie?” He seems more perturbed by the unfamiliar not knowing than the touching, which felt indecent to Seeley. After a moment, he let go and turned to face forward, shuffling in his seat.  
  
“We are also going the wrong way. Turn left at the next set of traffic lights.”  
  
  
2.  
  
  
Seeley can remember the slightest tremble down Zack's spine as he gripped him firmly to his side. He can picture clearly the young man’s long, spiderlike fingers, splayed across the hollowed-out chest of Epp's poor, sad ex-wife, who had faith enough in rehabilitation and human nature to give herself to a monster. He can still recall Zack's own trust in Seeley, that he believed wholeheartedly that he had no reason to be afraid, even with a serial killer after them and a bomb triggered well within range of him, because one of Seeley's hands is wrapped around his abdomen and the other is pressing down on the body as well.  
  
He knows, logically, that Zack is okay. But it is still terrifying, considering the possibilities. Far more terrifying than it should be.  
  
And he thinks he know why.  
  
  
3.  
  
  
Seeley isn't sure why he does it. Maybe he remembers how dejected Zack had looked, standing in the doorway to Bones' office, forgotten by friends and colleagues. Or his wide eyes, palms pressed to the rigged, prone body of Caroline Epps, right before Seeley yanked him away from the explosion.  
  
He doesn't know Zacks' number, but it's really not much of a detour to duck into the Jeffersonian on his way home from Brennan's apartment. It's not like Zack will actually be here, with the case over hours ago. It has to be approaching one in the morning.  
  
But Zack is there, stretching oddly across the couch like a scarecrow folded into a sleeping position. “Where's Dr. Brennan?” he asks, leaning to the left slightly as if expecting Bones just beyond his line of sight. “I thought you were looking after her. Shouldn't you be with Dr. Brennan?”  
  
It occurs to Seeley that one's told him that the case is over. Sure, they had been busy, but Bones had called Angela, at least, and texted Hodgins. And Zack was the one most directly affected – he'd been ordered to remain in the labs until Epps was caught, what with the “faked-death” thing.  
  
And his first thought, after all of that, is to the safety of Bones.  
  
Seeley had never thanked him for saving Hodgins and Bones. It had been him who had decoded the message that led them to the burial site, hoping even after the countdown ended that he could save them, but when he thinks back, Seeley doesn't remember ever acknowledging it.  
  
“Epp's dead,” snaps Seeley. He'd rather not think about it. “Cam is okay. Go home now.” He takes another look at Zack, who has his lab coat pulled across himself like a blanket and his shoes off, neatly set beside the couch. “Were you _sleeping_ in here?”  
  
“Well I wasn't sure how much longer I was going to be dead for, and I don't start work for another seven and a quarter hours -”  
  
“Hey, put your shoes on, I'll give you a lift, okay?” He gestures towards the door he walked in through. Damn squints, messing up his night. “Hurry up, alright? I just want to get home, crawl into bed and never get out.”  
  
Zack looks to either side. He seems to have decided not to ask about the case – maybe even he can sense the tension in Seeley's person. “Don't you have something to do here? Collecting Dr. Brennan's newest book, perhaps?” Still, he's ready enough to follow orders, lacing up his shoes and setting the coat to the side. He looks different in his new outfit; his hair reminds Seeley of his own in the military, freshly clippered.  
  
“Nah, it doesn't matter. Get in the car, squint.”  
  
  
\---  
  
  
Zack kisses him.  
  
His first reaction is to pull away, and he does. They're standing by the passenger door of his car. Zack, at five foot ten, is not short; but Seeley is 6'1”, and his nose bumps awkwardly against the agents' chin. “Zack,” he growls, less than a foot apart, “What in _the hell_ was that?”  
  
“I'm sorry. I'm not good at recognising social cues and boundaries. According to Angela, physical contact can be a good way to provide emotional support where one or both parties might consider words inappropriate. Angela says that I am tactless with my words, and that many men will not even consider discussing emotionally charged events with friends or colleagues. Which is why I didn't ask you about the case, even though according to my newest book, short, monosyllabic sentences, rigid body language and minimal eye contact may suggest emotional distress, particularly in the wake of high-energy situations.”  
  
Seeley is well aware that this does not explain why Zack has kissed him, and the wide-eyed, flighty look he gets when Seeley looks at him too long means that Zack knows as well. “... Also because I died today and because I wanted to.”  
  
He looks back down at Zack. There are cuts across his cheeks and on his lip. He knows that there are more beneath his clothes, bruises and grazes across his ribs and the back of his shins where his legs hit the upturned table, and on his forearms where he shielded himself from the rubble. Zack, nervous, socially inept Zack, has shoved his chin forward defiantly, but hasn't quite found the courage to look up. Seeley draws his hand along the tilted-up chin and settles it against his collarbone.  
  
He steps closer. Zack's back presses against the passenger door. “Agent Booth,” he says, as breathless as Seeley feels. A hand moves between them to close around Seeley's fingers where they're pressed to his throat.  
  
Seeley kisses back.  
  
  
4.  
  
  
“- We have engaged in coitus on multiple occasions. She has not asked me on a date, and avoids me in all other situations. I would describe our interactions – excluding the aforementioned coitus – as dismissive on her part, though that is no different than our interaction previous to the initiation of coitus.”  
  
Seeley freezes. Bones is still on the phone to her publisher, arguing about a new attempt at a movie or some such, and he's loitering beside the card swipe beside the steps to the lab proper. Across the freshest body, Zack and Angela are talking.  
  
“I am not under the impression that she wants a relationship. She's been very forward about it all – 'all' being sexual intercourse – and has given me no indication of wanting to change our current dynamic.”  
  
“I don't really understand what you're asking me, sweetie,” said Angela, and Seeley could hear the confusion in her tone. “Do you … want more from the relationship?”  
  
“I don't know what is expected of me. I have never been in a relationship of such a singularly sexual nature.”  
  
“Have you tried explaining that to Naomi?” suggests Angela, remembering the blonde with the heavy frown and the snide comments. “Just tell her what you want.”  
  
“I want whatever she's willing to give me,” Zack admits, and Seeley flees into Bones' office.  
  
  
5.  
  
  
Zack's head is tucked against his neck. His limbs are a tangle, thighs pressed against Seeley's own beneath the sheets. One hand curves under them to the shape of Seeley's shoulder, near to his nape, and the other wanders across his body in deliberate, definite movements. He counts vertebrae and ribs and metacarpals and phalanges, identifying them by touch. His hair has grown out a little, tickling the underside of Seeley's chin.  
  
His mouth meets Seeley's clavicle and moves slightly as he mutters each name, lips catching on the bone and warm breath ghosting. The bruises are fading from his ribs and the cuts are all but gone from his face and hands.  
  
“I've run out of bones where I can reach them,” he announces, pressing a palm to the protrusion of Seeley's hip and adding _“ilium-ischium-pubis-pubicsymphysis-coccyx-sacrum-acetabulum”_. “But I do not want to move.”  
  
Seeley can never remember this part of his night sounding so much like a high school biology class. He flicks Zack's shoulder and tugs him a little closer. “Then _don't_.”


End file.
